


A Black Eye and a Shoebox

by curls101



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Interspecies Relationship(s), Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 10:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10965480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curls101/pseuds/curls101
Summary: “You really didn’t bring anything with you?”A perfectly innocent conversation about what Clara had bought with her from the Milky Way digs up a part of her life that she hadn't completely left behind. Fortunately, she now has a girlfriend who is willing to help her through it.





	A Black Eye and a Shoebox

**Author's Note:**

> There isn't really any spoilers in this, apart from the first mission (Habitat 7), so enjoy!  
> (If you're into reading with music, my recommendation would be Technicolour Beat by Oh Wonder for this one)

“You really didn’t bring anything with you?” Vetra asked, taking the mug of dextro-coffee substitute from Clara’s hands. Moments between the two of them were rare on the best of days, with a whole new universe exploding around them, but with the leadership on Kadara stabilized the Nexus had finally decided to give Ryder a few moments to breathe. Vetra would never say it, but the stress Ryder was under was starting to show. There were dark patches around her brown eyes, her nails had been bitten down to the beds, and she’d stopped doing her hair in the morning. Dressed only in her oversized red sweatshirt and her underwear, Vetra could see a whole network of scars that she didn’t think had been there even a few weeks earlier. 

“I mean, nothing important,” she replied, dropping down into her desk chair and pulling her knees up to her chest, “A few little things I couldn’t bare to part with, but nothing really significant.”  
“You think my naked Asari lamp was `significant`?” Vetra scoffed, enjoying the smile that bloomed across her girlfriend’s face. Her fingers drummed against the side of her own coffee mug before she replied,  
“It was significant to you,” she paused to take a huge mouthful of coffee, “I just bought my mum’s jumper and a shoebox full of photos.”  
“Photos?” Vetra asked, cocking her head slightly, “Like, physical ones? Isn’t that a little…”  
“Outdated?” Clara finished, nodding, “Yeah, It really is. I had to have them specially printed, but there was something nice about having them, y’know? I think I was going to put them together into a portfolio of my work or something, I just never got round to it.”

For a moment there was a pause as they both downed the rest of their coffee. Clara gently turned the office chair from side to side with her foot, staring off towards the view of Kadara outside the window. Only after a while did Vetra process something Ryder had said,  
“Were you a photographer then?”  
Clara’s brow creased and she stared for a moment, as if she was trying to work out if Vetra was joking,  
“What? Did I say something wrong?”  
“No! No, it’s just…I thought everyone knew. I know most of the human crew knows, and anyone who actually read my dossier.”  
Clara rose from her chair, abandoning her mug, and walked over to her wardrobe and started rummaging through the bottom draws.  
“A piece of the mysterious Pathfinder’s murky past I don’t know about? I’ve got to hear this,” Vetra muttered, putting her now empty mug onto the bedside table.

After a few moments, she found what she was looking for and headed over to where Vetra was perched on her bed, clutching a small but incredibly battered blue box covered in all kinds of stamps and stickers.  
“I was a model when I was a teenager. Only for about a year-”  
“A model? For, like, clothes and stuff?”  
Clara nodded, pushing up the too-long sleeves of her jumper and opening up the lid,  
“Clothes, perfumes, Alliance recruiting programs, anything really. I was a teenager who loved the attention,” with a sad but endearing smile, she picked out a small square image and run her finger across it, “God, my hair was so long. I thought I was such hot shit, seriously.”  
With a small laugh, she passed the image over to Vetra before thumbing through the rest of the stack of photos.

Clara was clearly younger in this photo and her hair was indeed very long. Instead of the shorter cut she had now with the shaved sides, her hair was long and her dark curls sprung out in every direction. The image was entirely black and white, apart from a single streak of lime green paint that went from her forehead all the way down her face, eventually disappearing into her shirt, only curving slightly over the smirk of her lips.   
“That was one of my really early ones, I didn’t really know what I was doing, but it was a paid gig and my dad didn’t want me to do it, so I had fun. I like this one better, but you’ll laugh at it,”  
Vetra carefully put the image down on the bedspread, letting out a small chuckle,  
“Why would I laugh? Do you really think that little of me?”  
“I’m wearing a dress in it,”  
“Well now I HAVE to see it,”

It was certainly a dress alright. This image was in full, saturated colour. Clara - again, younger, and with somehow even longer hair- was stood on a large, old looking staircase, peering over her shoulder with a coy, `oh were you looking at me` smirk. The dress itself was clearly the star of the image. It was basically entirely backless and had a train that almost descended the entire staircase, the deep red silk hugged Clara’s waist tightly, before fanning out into the train. The photographer had spread a path of white rose petals in a line from the camera to the end of the dress. It was wonderful, and made Vetra suddenly and inexplicably think of warm summer days and old human movies where the heroes get married at the end.

Clara rested her head on Vetra’s shoulder and let out a small, content hum.   
“You’re so...beautiful,” Vetra muttered, handing the photo back to her, suddenly feeling very small and foolish. Her girlfriend laughed a little, and Vetra had the joy of watching a deep blush blossom across her dark skin,  
“Thanks, Vet,” she replied, pressing a kiss into her cheek, “But these guys were professionals. It didn’t matter what I looked like, they made me look like a million bucks. I could turn up to shoots looking like an absolute mess, with greasy hair, spots-”  
As if possessed by an idea, Clara reached behind her and drew the shoebox up onto her lap. A few moments passed while she thumbed through image after image until she found the one she’d been searching for and frantically handed it to Vetra.

“See what I mean?” she asked, pointing to the photo, “You wouldn’t even guess there was anything wrong with this, would you? It’s really interesting to me. I never looked at any pictures the same after I did this whole modelling thing,”  
Vetra stared at the image for a few moments. It was another headshot, but this time Clara was lying down surrounded by what appeared to be small white and blue flowers, her hair fanning out around her. A black silk robe fell around her shoulders, but the image cut off before anything possibly considered indecent could be seen. She stared at the photo a little longer, trying to mentally draw comparison between the Clara she knew and the one shown, but drew blanks.  
“You’re totally right,” she conceded, “If you hadn’t told me, I woulda said this hadn’t been changed at all.”

Gently, Ryder took the photo from Vetra’s hands and just seemed to fixate on it for a few moments, her face falling into a kind of bittersweet stare that searched desperately into the image for some sort of understanding.   
“Hey, babe, is something wrong?” Vetra asked, putting her hand onto hers. Clara seemed to snap back to reality,  
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine really,” she mumbled, “It’s uh… I, uh, turned up for the shoot that day. And I had this...black eye. It was...awful. Puffy and stuff, I could barely see. I was a mess, I thought they’d kick me off the project, but the photographer...The photographer just grabbed my shoulders and told me that all it took was confidence. If you’re confident enough in what you want to show, no one will really see anything else, because,y’know, why would they want to?”  
Clara hastily put the photograph, along with the others, back into the shoebox, shut the lid, and shoved it under the bed. She sat cross-legged across from Vetra, taking one of her hands in her own and fixating on it as she spoke,  
“He never asked me how I got the black eye anyhow,” she added sadly, “I always wondered if he had, if maybe things coulda been different for me, maybe...maybe… God, I don’t know. Maybe I would have joined the Alliance earlier and been a soldier my whole life, or settled down somewhere away from people and drank expensive wines, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. It’s dumb that I even still think about it.”

There was a few moments pause before Clara stood up and began walking over to her workspace, assumedly to filter through and respond to emails before getting dragged into whatever nonsense was going on in the Tempest chat. Vetra considered dropping the whole subject all together. It was obviously something intensely personal and probably something she’d rather leave dead in the Milky Way, and she really shouldn’t pry. Yet, there was something so upsetting in her eyes. Some old ghost that lingered just out of sight.  
“Clara, babe?” Vetra muttered, unsure of the words even as they left her mouth. Clara stopped and spun on her heels, flashing her best, confident smile.  
“Something you need, hun?”  
“How did you get the black eye?”

Vetra felt her heart sink as the smile drained from her lover’s face. She seemed to hesitate for a few seconds, before taking a deep breath and pushing her curly hair back away from her face. Slowly, she drifted towards the bed, perching next to Vetra and taking one of her hands, placing a kiss into the back of it as if she was about to deliver awful news.  
“My, uh...I had a boyfriend, at the time,” she muttered, scrunching her nose up, “back when I thought I was into boys. He...wasn’t a good person. Drugs, gangs, that kinda stuff. Treated me like shit. Still don’t know why I stuck around so fucking long…”  
Vetra squeezed her hand,  
“If he was still alive, I’d kill him for you.”  
Clara let out a small, dark chuckle, turning to face her, and pressed her forehead to hers,  
“I know you would, that’s why I love you so much,” she muttered, giving her a small kiss, “Someone put several bullets in that asshole a long time ago, don’t worry…”

Vetra gently wrapped her arms around Clara’s waist and just held her for a moment. She couldn’t be sure, but it felt as though she was shaking, which only made Vetra hold her tighter. “You’re a very strong person Clara Ryder,” Vetra muttered, releasing Clara from the hug. Her girlfriend let out a small, tired laugh, cupping the side of Vetra’s face and running her thumb along her cheekbone,  
“Nah, I’m not really,” she protested, quietly, “Not like you, hun. I didn’t raise my own sibling with only my two hands to fall back on. I just... Got drunk a lot, made bad choices and never learned when to move on. Nothin’ strong about that,”  
Clara went to walk away, but Vetra stood up and grabbed her hand,   
“You survived,” she insisted, “You survived a shitty excuse for a person, losing your mum and your dad, leaving everyone and everything you knew behind, and then, just to top it off, lead the way for thousands of people to start a new life in a galaxy that no one from the Milky Way had ever seen with their own eyes. I might just be a little biased, but I think there’s everything strong about that.”

Clara didn’t immediately say anything, but tears started welling in her eyes and she gave Vetra the widest smile she could,  
“What would I do without you, Vetra?”   
Vetra gave a little shrug,  
“Oh, knowing you, probably get shot in the back because you’re too focused down your scope to actually look over your shoulder every so often…”  
A small laugh bubbled up from the Pathfinder, and the smiling, watery-eyed look she gave Vetra then was so beautiful it ripped the air from her lungs.   
“You’re probably right, yeah,” Clara gave her a small kiss, that ended up lingering a little longer than she’d expected it to, “I love you, Vetra Nyx.”  
“I love you too, Clara Ryder.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna ask questions, or see any of the thousands of screenshots I have of Clara, hit me up on tumblr. I'm curls101.tumblr.com
> 
> Also, two things:  
> \- My writing is super rusty, I know, please go easy in comments (But I would still love comments! or Kudos, I'm not fussy)  
> \- No, I can't write a fic without talking about photography, this is my curse.


End file.
